THE cab drew up at the address in Old Compton Street given by Freyberger to the driver. It was a small shop, filled with antiques, old china, statuettes, renovated pictures.

Here the art of Japan drew a sword or flirted a fan at you; the Middle Ages spoke through the mouthpiece of a battle-dented morion.

Behind the counter, in the midst of his treasures, mostly spurious, sat the owner of the shop I. Antonides, smoking a cigarette and apparently lost in reverie.

An old man, a very old man, was Antonides. A Greek of the modern Greeks, with the head of a prophet and the hand of a money changer.

Behind that parchment-coloured forehead lay a knowledge of ancient and modern art—profound almost as the subject itself.

Beauty of craftsmanship appealed to Antonides. He worshipped the Venus of Milo, not for the divine beauty of her form, but for the cunning of the hand that wrought her. A rose had no power to move his soul, but a goblin by Calot, were it in the best style of that master, made him cry out with pleasure.

He worshipped art for the sake of art, and he worshipped money for the sake of money.

His fortune was reputed to be half a million, and he lived on a pound a week.

He was very frank, with that frankness which sometimes veils the deepest and most profound deceit; he had no loves or hates, no heart, no wife, no children or relations. Only his money and his profound knowledge of men and art.

There were many curiosities for sale in the shop of Antonides, but the most curious of them all was Antonides, also on sale—at a price.

He nodded to Freyberger.

“I want you to do a little job for me, Mr Antonides.”

“What is the little job, Mr Freyberger?”

“Oh, it’s simple enough to you, impossible to anyone else.”

“Ah!”

“I want you to restore a broken—what shall I say—well, I believe it is a marble bust.”

“Yes?”

“I want you to do more than restore it, for I want you to do the job as quickly as possible.”

“Possibility has its limits,” said Antonides. “Show me the article.”

Freyberger went out and took from the cab the drawer wrapped in the sheet, brought it in and unwrapped it.

Antonides examined the fragments.

“I will restore it for you,” he said, after examining minutely several of the pieces and gauging in his mind the total number.

“How long will it take?”

“Oh—three days.”

“That won’t do. I want it by to-morrow morning.”

Antonides raised his eyebrows and shrugged his shoulders.

“Look here,” said Freyberger. “What will you charge to do it in three days?”

“You must understand,” replied Antonides, “that I do not restore marble. I do not restore pictures now myself. I am getting old, Mr Freyberger.”

“We are all doing that. What will you charge—”

“Getting old,” continued Antonides, as though unconscious of the other’s question, “costs money; one has to call in help. I have secured an assistant, an Alsatian; his name is Lermina—”

“Yes, yes, but—”

“I taught him the art of restoration, the knowledge I have placed in that man’s head,” said the old gentleman, suddenly pretending to turn savage, “is worth a king’s ransom, and he has repaid me in the oldest coinage of the world—ingratitude—”

“I know, but what will you charge—”

“One moment, I wish to explain my position. Lermina is a genius.”

“Yes, yes, I grant that—”

“You know what geniuses are, just spoiled children; well, he is also about to get married—”

“What the devil has that to do with me—”

“One moment. A genius is bad enough to deal with, but a genius in love is infinitely worse. I ask Lermina to restore this bust, he accepts the commission, but he is in love and can’t be hurried. Three days, well, with seven pounds in my hand I believe I could undertake to persuade him to complete the thing in three days.”

“Well,” said Freyberger, who knew his man right to the place where his heart ought to have been. “Three days won’t do for me. I must have the thing completed by to-morrow morning at ten o’clock.”

Antonides said nothing, but, reaching down, produced an enormous snuff-box from under the counter, took a pinch, tapped the box, and put it back.

Then he smiled and shook his head.

“Come,” said Freyberger, patiently. “By ten o’clock to-morrow morning.”

“It’s impossible.”

“Nothing is impossible of this sort to you, if you are paid—”

“I would have to sit up all night—”

“Why, you said you had an assistant.”

“I would have to sit up all night helping him; it would be a two mans’ job.”

Then suddenly.

“Twenty pounds?”

“I’ll give you ten.”

“I never haggle.”

“I’ll give you ten.”

“Not a penny under twenty, not a brass farthing, not a denier under twenty—look at my rent, look at my income-taxes to be paid. Five hundred pounds they robbed me of this year in income-taxes alone.”

“Five hundred!”

“I mean fifty. I am a very poor man, Mr Freyberger—no, no, no, not a penny under twenty.”

“All right,” said Freyberger. “If you won’t do the job I know a man who will.”

He took the drawer and carried it to the door.

“Eighteen,” shrieked Antonides, as the detective fumbled with the door latch.

“I tell you what,” said Freyberger. “I’ll give you fifteen, and that’s my ultimatum.”

“Done,” said Antonides. As a matter of fact he would have done the job for five pounds—for nothing. He divined, from the pieces he had examined, that the thing was superexcellent and by a master’s hand, and he would have been satisfied to have put it together on spec if he were given a chance of purchasing it when completed.

Freyberger left the shop, and, getting into the cab, ordered the cab-driver to take him to the Yard.

The War Office sometimes nods, and the Admiralty has been known to indulge in reverie, but New Scotland Yard never sleeps.

The construction of the Criminal Investigation Department resembles the construction of some beautiful and intricate piece of mechanism.

The detection of crime is its chief function, but it has others. It keeps the eye of a stern father upon the law-breakers. There is not a considerable criminal walking about free in London who is not known and docketed at the Yard.

It knows more about him than he knows about himself; it knows his height, weight and colour of his hair; it has the prints of his fingers and the photograph of his face, it knows where he lodges and with whom he associates, it knows the exact extent and bent of his moral twist.

When a crime of a special nature has been committed by some unknown person, the Yard searches amongst the criminals who make that especial crime their speciality.

One might fancy that in the case of a crime committed by a man in the position of Sir Anthony Gyde, that the search for him would not be any more difficult than the search for a professional criminal. As a matter of fact, it is much more so.

Your non-professional law-breaker has no associates to betray him, and, what is more, being a novice, he adopts no beaten methods. He will often escape, because of his ignorance as to how he should hide, just as a novice in fencing will sometimes, through his own stupidity and want of knowledge, succeed in touching a master-at-arms.

There is nothing a detective dreads more than the ingenuous.

Whilst Freyberger had been pursuing his investigations, the Yard had not been idle.

By eleven o’clock that morning an embargo had been laid upon all the ports of England, as close as that which Buckingham laid in the case of Anne of Austria’s jewels.

No person in the least like Sir Anthony Gyde could possibly have left the Kingdom, unless by flight.

Every paper appearing after twelve carried his portrait far and wide. A hundred and fifty detectives were at work upon the case, and not a train left London for the north, south, east or west whose passengers were not “filtered.”

The Yard knows the importance of acting promptly and efficiently in a case like this. The first few hours are vital; it pours out money like water. Should the required person escape the first furious rummaging of the detective force the pursuit slackens, or seems to do so. In reality, the nets are still out. Months pass, the suspected one feels himself no longer searched for. “I am forgotten,” he says. Then one day he makes a false move and feels a hand upon his shoulder.

When Freyberger returned to the Yard, he found his chief in consultation with his subordinates.

When a crime of great magnitude or intricacy occurs, a council of the brightest intelligences in the detective service is called.

It is technically known as the council of seven, which does not in the least mean that the number of consultants are always seven, for sometimes this or that member may be absent.

On this occasion there were only four men in consultation, including the chief, but these four men constituted a galaxy of almost infernal talent. They were seated about the room, and at the table, pen in hand, sat the chief. Inspector Frost, a clean-shaved, youngish-looking man, with a dark moustache twisted up at the ends, sat nearly opposite the chief.

Standing at the table, hat in hand and preparing to go, stood a medium-sized middle-aged man, with black hair, small black moustache, fresh coloured face and an extraordinarily sharp and penetrating eye.

This was Professor Salt, the Home Office expert, the surgeon called in, in all cases of murder, when the skill of a surgeon or pathologist can be of any avail.

He had just been detailing the result of his examination of the head found at 110B Piccadilly.

The dentist who attended Sir Anthony was, unfortunately, away on a holiday in Cairo, so his evidence could not be obtained as to whether the head was truly that of Sir Anthony or not. Several men who had known him had examined the thing, and they all differed. Some said it most certainly was; some recognized a strong likeness, but could not be sure; several declared that, in their opinion, it wasn’t.

These people, who had been hurriedly summoned for the purpose of identifying the thing, were of all grades and professions.

Club waiters, a nobleman or two, the servants of the house, and others. When Freyberger, who was not a member of the high council, but who was admitted on account of his being an active agent in the case, had closed the door, saluted his chief and taken a modest seat in a corner of the room, Professor Salt was just finishing the remarks he was making.

“You see,” he said, “it is a matter of extraordinary difficulty to say exactly how long this head has been removed from the body; it has been dipped in some agent or passed through some process, which has discoloured the skin and shrunk the tissues. An acid might have done this, but, unfortunately for that theory, the skin gives a slightly alkaline reaction when touched with moist litmus paper. It has, to me, the appearance of a head that had been dried just as you dry a ham, by smoking it. Yet there is no trace of carbon to be found on the skin. I confess I am somewhat at a loss, for a case of the kind has never come before me up to this, and I believe it is unique in forensic medicine. That head might have been removed from the body a year ago, so dehydrated are the tissues. I do not say, having in view some unknown preservative agent, that it may not have been removed twelve hours ago. But I can say this, that whoever removed it was a most skilled anatomist. I have had many cases of dismemberment; in all of them the head has been hacked off through the cervical vertebra. This is quite different, the head has been removed above the atlas, the ligaments cleanly divided; no trace of hacking is discernible at the base of the skull. The thing was not so much dismemberment as a surgical operation, conducted with extraordinary skill, the most extraordinary skill. I do not think,” he finished with a grim smile, “that I could have done the thing so completely and artistically myself.” He buttoned up his overcoat, bowed to the chief, nodded to the detectives and departed.

“Well, Freyberger?” said the chief, “what news have you brought?”

“First, sir, may I ask two questions? Has the dentist given his decision? and have Coutts’s examined the handwriting of Sir Anthony Gyde?”

“The dentist is absent and can’t be called,” replied the other. “And as for the bankers, Sir Anthony went in, signed a receipt for the delivery of the parcel containing his wife’s jewels, which receipt was handed to the manager who released the jewels.

“The receipt was written before and handed to a man who knew Sir Anthony Gyde perfectly well. He asked Sir Anthony would he care to see the manager personally. Sir Anthony............